


Flip of the Coin

by Nefhiriel



Series: Intersecting Lines [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Anger, Angst, Avengers Family, Battle, Bucky Barnes & Steve Rogers Friendship, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Epic Friendship, Feels, Fix-It of Sorts, Freeform, Friendship, Gen, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Control, Non-Graphic Violence, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Protective Bucky Barnes, Rage, Steve Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers Feels, Villains of the Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-24 13:12:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1606421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nefhiriel/pseuds/Nefhiriel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky can be scary. </p><p>But the the Winter Soldier? He's terrifying.</p><p>OR</p><p>Steve gets struck down during a fight, and doesn't get back up - and Bucky <i>snaps</i>. (And even the Hulk's impressed with the collateral damage.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flip of the Coin

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this [magnificent prompt](http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/19023.html?thread=44228175#t44228175), and edited by my magnificent beta, Imbecamiel.
> 
> Writing and posting this now kind of messes up my neat little chronological progression of Bucky!Feels, since I'm working on more fics that would follow after [Crash & Burn](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1507601/chapters/3184604) takes place. But I think this is pretty stand-alone-ish, provided you accept the fact that Bucky's made his way back to Steve, and that despite the events of CA2, the Avengers still function, and Sam functions as one of them.

In a sense, Bucky would always be inexorably linked to the Winter Soldier. Whatever he did, however far the healing went, the Soldier would always be a part of him.

Responsibility for his actions might belong to the ones who’d brainwashed him and _crafted_ him into a weapon for HYDRA, but the fact remained: he’d been made into a killing machine, and he’d killed, again and again, with finesse and finality.

But they still took him as he was.

Steve supposed that if anyone were to understand the complexity of a story like Bucky’s it would _these_ people. Tony, Bruce, Thor, Clint, Natasha, and Sam. They each had their dark chapters—maybe not all of them on par with the Winter Soldier’s, but some of them close enough, and each of them painful and complicated in their own right.

They understood nightmares, and flashbacks, and the stages of a grief so strong it was frightening to live through (and even more frightening to watch someone else live through). They understood that sometimes grief was about losing some _one_ , and sometimes it was about losing some _thing_ infinitely harder to protect than life itself.

Bucky had definitely lost something to the Soldier.

But while Steve saw their initial wariness, he also saw their forgiveness in the way they gave Bucky space without avoiding him when he stepped into a room. They allowed him to just _be,_ without forcing him to be what they wanted him to be. They treated him like a human being, and gradually Steve watched their actions humanize Bucky.

 _Re_ -humanize Bucky.

If, every now and then, Bucky reacted like the Soldier—glaring sharply at some innocuous comment, and turning on his heel without explanation—then nobody made a point of bringing it up after the moment had passed. And, if Bucky treated Steve like a kid brother in need of his special protection, then none of them (Steve included) robbed him of his sense of purpose by reminding him that sickly Steve Rogers had become Captain America. 

Also, if any of them were being honest, they were afraid to interfere when it came to Bucky’s protective instincts. When a reporter had gotten in Steve’s face, demanding answers and shoving her microphone at him, Bucky had grabbed it from her and snapped it in half (and only Steve’s fast reactions had kept Bucky from following that up with snapping something else in half).

No, Steve wasn’t defenseless. Far from it. But that wasn’t the point—the point was that Bucky _would_ protect him. The team respected the boundaries. Clint and Thor learned to ease up on play shoving Steve, no one ever again offered to pour Bucky a glass of milk, and for weeks no one got tackled.

Sometimes Bucky could joke about it all like he used to joke about things (and that made Steve grin like he hadn’t grinned since before the war), and sometimes Bucky couldn’t joke about any of it (and Steve tried not to crowd Bucky when he turned away, stubbornly dry-eyed), and they all rolled with the punches, because that was what a team did for one another.

But it got easier and easier to forget the Soldier in the course of the day-to-day, as Bucky’s smooth charm and sauntering walk began to eclipse the militant bearing and the haunted eyes.

The team was such a huge part of that. They made it possible for Bucky to not just remember old faces, but to learn new ones that he could trust—and sometimes Steve’s heart was so full of gratitude that he hardly knew what to say to any of them.

But, somehow, he knew that he didn’t have to say anything at all.

When a group of Cyborg Pirates (no one even groaned at Tony’s names anymore) attacked Manhattan, pillaging and plundering, none of them thought twice about including Bucky in their number.

Bucky certainly didn’t think twice about donning tactical gear, arming himself, and following Steve when he assembled the team. He didn’t ask any questions, and he didn’t ask for permission to be there.

With his long hair tied into a knot at the nape of his neck, and his eyes narrowed and ready for orders as he curled his metal fist, he wasn’t the Bucky that Steve remembered. But he was still _Bucky_ , and Steve felt a swell of pride to have him there again, a solid presence at his back.

For the first time in their lives they were physically on a similar playing field, and Steve knew Bucky was relishing the feeling as much as he was as they charged into the fight together. 

The Avengers were at the top of their game, too, eager to take their stations. Clint took them out from a rooftop perch. Natasha broke necks with lethal grace. Thor and Hulk smashed. Tony and Sam strafed and dive-bombed.

Steve and Bucky whirled, fired, and flung dagger and shield.

The hardest part was adapting to the cyborgs’ different methods of attack. Beneath the helms, and eye patches, and leather hoods they wore, it was hard to get a read on their snarling faces. Although humanoid, their skin was a pasty grayish-blue and the eyes were unnaturally large and dark and blank.

Steve brought up his shield to block a rough-edged scimitar, catching the cyborg’s momentum and thrusting him back. It staggered, and before it could right itself Steve launched his shield at its neck. As it gurgled and dropped to its knees, Steve was already running forward to catch his rebounding shield and hammer it down for the deathblow to the head.

Despite his enhanced reflexes, it was always a feat to keep a sense of where the rest of the team was without losing track of his own fight. Some of the cyborgs wielded bows, and Steve kept glancing upward for confirmation that the returned fire wasn’t causing problems for Hawkeye.

“Falcon,” Steve spoke into the comm, dodging a sledgehammer, “cover Hawkeye. I need him focused on taking as many of them out as he can. Hawkeye—” 

“—Aim for the ones giving orders,” Clint agreed, notching an arrow, “got ‘em in my sights, Cap.”

Sam angled towards Hawkeye’s position. “ _Nobody_ touches the fledgling while Falcon’s watching the nest. Take that, suckers.”

“ _Thanks,_ Sam, you’re a real gift,” Hawkeye retorted dryly.

“You two are adorable, you know that?” Tony cooed, blasting his way down the street. “Long lost bird brothers, reunited at last.”

The squabbling, and the puns, flew freely for a while, and Steve caught Natasha rolling her eyes in between smashing cyborgs. But it was comfortable, this low-grade non-animosity that kept Tony’s wit occupied, and Clint’s sarcasm in full working order.

Steve was finishing with his third sledgehammer-wielding cyborg when the fist slammed into him from behind with skull-cracking force. He stumbled, ears ringing as he turned around to face the cyborg—tall, thick-chested, with an arm that was a weapon of its own.

The metalwork was sloppy: the seams where it had been welded together ragged like scars. But the man-robot already had his robotic arm poised to strike, and Steve was too slow in recovering—to slow to raise his shield.

He cried out at impact, vision blacking out as his head snapped to the side, and he only realized he was falling when his shoulder made bone-jarring contact with the street. The jagged tear of pain that rent his skull made his stomach churn with instant nausea he couldn’t quell.

Everything in him screamed for him to move, but with his senses wavering in and out in a dizzying, drunken blur, there was simply nothing he could do to convince his body to cooperate.

So he lay there, stunned and reeling, bile rising in his throat, praying the cyborg wouldn’t finish what it had started, willing the roaring in his ears to fade.

But instead of fading, the roaring grew closer.

He wasn’t sure how many seconds—minutes?—trickled by as he lay there in the dust, just trying to breathe.

After far too long, he tried to lift his head, but between the pounding in his head and the light of broad day, his eyes were watering too much for him to see clearly.

A shadow fell over him, the smell of gunpowder close, and Natasha was saying, “Hold on, Cap,” as she crouched low and protective in front of him. Her fingers touched gently to the pulse point on his neck before brushing across his brow. 

Steve blinked away the tears, and tried to sit up, groaning when the movement made the pain spike afresh, zinging down his spine like an electrical current.

Cool fingers cupped the back of his neck. Natasha’s tone was steely with warning. “Don’t move, Steve. Stay down. That head wound looks pretty nasty. We’ve got them on the run, so just relax.”

“The team…” he slurred, casting his gaze around, trying to see past her. The source of the crashing and rendinggoing on around him was still a blur.

“The team’s fine,” Natasha said firmly, and then more softly under her breath, “although you may need to talk to him once he’s through.”

As Steve’s vision improved, the “ _him_ ” in question soon became readily apparent.

Bucky wasn’t far off—lunging, swinging, fighting hand-to-hand. His hair had come loose, hanging forward in his face, but he didn’t seem bothered by it. He didn’t seem to notice much at all except his enemies as he exploited their weak spots one by one, and dodged their counter attacks with arrogant ease.

He fought blind, and furious, in a frenzy of movement that was awe-inspiring. Steve had been on the other side of the Winter Soldier’s attacks, and he wouldn’t have thought it possible for the raw power to gain momentum—he wouldn’t have thought it possible for him gain speed and efficiency through sheer _rage_. 

He’d been wrong.

Among the throng of cyborgs, Steve recognized the lumbering frame of the one that had hit him with its metal fist. Bucky was working his way methodically towards it, flinging, and smashing, and destroying as he went with a single-minded devotion to killing that sent a chill through Steve.

The rest of the Avengers were nearby, fighting stragglers who’d begun to run away from the fight—but none of them got in Bucky’s path.

And when Bucky arrived in front of his target, he raised his fist, and snarled in wordless hate.

The cyborg made a deep rumbling noise and swung for Bucky’s head. Bucky side-stepped, and drove his fist into the flesh-and-blood half of its face. And then he did it again, and _again_ , driving it backwards and running it into the ground with his teeth still bared in a snarl of insatiable thirst for revenge.

“Hush, Steve…” Natasha soothed, and Steve hadn’t even realized he’d made a sound of concerned distress, trying instinctively to rise.

Steve gritted his teeth and stilled under her steadying touch, because none of them could interrupt this, even as desperately as a part of him wanted to try to find a way. The object of Bucky’s hate needed dealing with, but it was the blind hate _itself_ that made Steve’s heart throb painfully in his chest.

The Soldier’s carnage continued until there was a circle of dismantled cyborgs around Steve, some of them with robotic limbs torn clean off.

The hell-bent assassin kept killing until there was nothing left to kill, and then he stood in the midst of the damage he’d wreaked, still panting and glaring for more.

But there was no more to be had, and the rest of them stood staring at the efficiency of the onslaught with a mixture of dismay and amazement. Even the Hulk had stopped to stare in awe at the sight of so many smashed foes, and under any other circumstances that slack, dumb-founded expression would’ve been hilarious.

They all understood too well what had just happened, and they waited in the sudden hush to see what the Soldier would do next. Now awakened, none of them could really tell what might set him off rampaging some more.

Natasha shifted minutely in her position in front of Steve, which was ridiculous, because Bucky would never hurt him—not now, after how far he’d come and how much he remembered.

The Soldier turned sharply at movement, body wound tightly for action, eyes still dark with cold, sharp-edged murder. The chill of horror hit Steve again, as it began to sink in just how far Bucky had been driven down that path, to the point where emotion ended and the desensitized machine took control.

But then the Soldier inhaled deeply, and when he released the breath it left him with a shudder, his shoulders sagging. He looked at Steve with suddenly bleak comprehension—and just like that, Bucky was back.

He stumbled towards Steve, as if his whole allotment of grace and vitality had just been spent, and Natasha only hesitated a moment before shifting enough for Bucky to kneel in front of Steve.

Steve noticed the way he’d tucked his metal arm to his chest, reaching out with his human hand trembling faintly from fading adrenaline.

“Bucky,” Steve said, and couldn’t help the regret or the reproach. It didn’t begin to cover what needed saying. There was too much that needed saying, about what Bucky had done, and what he’d been made to do. Those dark and twisted memories had just been dragged out into daylight for all of them to see.

Bucky shook his head almost petulantly, refusing to acknowledge the scolding in Steve’s look. He wiped the blood from the side of Steve’s face where it had run in rivulets. “You didn’t get up,” he said gruffly. “It hit you, and you didn’t get up.”

What psychologists called “PTSD” couldn’t begin to cover the haunted look in Bucky’s eyes. But labels didn’t really matter, here, because labeling things didn’t make them magically less messy. It didn’t tell Steve how to _fix_ this.

Bucky’s haggard gaze darted right and left, taking in the bodies that surrounded them, and when he looked back, and Steve saw him piece together his fragmented reality. 

“I did…all of that.”

It wasn’t really a question, and Steve didn’t have an answer. His head ached with each throb of his pulse, but something deep in his chest ached even worse. “Oh, Buck,” he said quietly.

“I think it’s time we went home,” Natasha suggested, mouth curving, just a little. “We’ve made our mark, here.” 

“But your head…” Bucky began, brows drawn together. “Steve. You need a doctor.”

“I’m thick-skulled—isn’t that what you’re always telling me?” Steve put a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “Just help me up, would ya? I’m a fast healer—I’ll be fine.” _We’ll_ all _be fine_. 

Bucky looped Steve’s arm across his neck and eased him upright. The world spun for a moment before it settled, and Steve let Bucky support his weight. 

When his wavering vision came to a standstill, the Avengers stood waiting. They fell in without question—but _none_ of them tried to take Steve from Bucky.

 


End file.
